Process

Video

Instrument for the Translation of Paleographic Memory

1989
Assemblage with led lights, fiber optic cables and meter
17 x 36 x 18 inches
Click to purchase or inquire about this artwork
For sale here from the current private collection,  formerly collection of Richard Garriott

LED lights glowing in the rock once refracted through fiber-optic lines back to the suitcase view screen. In 2025, new, brighter LEDs were installed, and damaged fiber-optic lines were cut back and patched to a second corresponding set inside the case panel, leaving only the LED power cable going to the stone. The effect remains unchanged: The stranded fiber ends are spread out and embedded in the clear acrylic screen to form star-like matrix patterns. Four patterns can be changed and adjusted with controls in the suitcase apparatus. The rock was found in an Austin creek bed and inspired this idea with its brain-like appearance. The absurd notion of extracting memories from a stone is balanced by the fantasy: what if this chunk could somehow document and store the history of its billion-or-so-year existence? (2025 addendum – It is ironic that recent discoveries in quantum physics support theories asserting that consciousness is inherent in all matter including stone.)

BRUDNIAK

This piece was in the historically significant “Another Reality” exhibit in Houston featured in the catalog with essays by internationally esteemed art critic Thomas McEvilley and once owned by explorer astronaut Richard Garriott.

“Steve Brudnlak’s sinister suitcase machine seems to be giving shock treatment to a brain-sized stone, which is simultaneously being heated or cooked In a little fondue-warmer. The brain is relating to an outside reality, but what? And through what mediation?”

THOMAS McEVILLEY – Another Reality